The present invention relates, in general, to a racing vehicle specifically developed for use in horse racing and which is an improvement over the vehicle disclosed and claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,847,408. More particularly, the present invention relates to a double shafted arch axle sulky fabricated from high strength steel alloy tubes having a tear-drop cross section for streamlining to provide a sulky that is light in weight, strong, produces less drag and which thereby improves the performance of the horse to which it is harnessed.
Until the advent of the single-shafted sulky disclosed and claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,847,408, which issued on Nov. 12, 1974 to the applicant herein, there had been little change in the sulkys used in harness horse racing in many years. The previous sulkys had been derived through evolution and adaptation of the single horse-drawn buggy, and little had been done to improve it other than to reduce it in size and reduce it to a two-wheeled vehicle. The single-shafted sulky was a dramatic step forward in the art of sulkys for horse racing, in that it represented the first real departure from prior systems and represented a new approach to the art of designing sulkys. The single-shafted sulky had numerous advantages, as described in the above-mentioned patent, and was successfully used for a period of time. However, for a variety of reasons the single-shafted sulky was held to be unuseable on commercial harness racing tracks and accordingly there developed a need for a sulky which would meet the technical requirements of harness racing tracks for sulkys, while providing the improved performance characteristics of the single-shafted sulky.